The old NatNeg thread - How to avoid bouncing in Pitboss (without Gamespy)

[wetbandit]

I would be interested to hear as well, perhaps BGN can start a topic in general after you guys initially talk.

[NobleHelium]

Clearly when that class needs a superpower simulation we can send in a RB micro brigade in to establish a runaway.

[spiait]

Sorry, guys. I'm just an IT guy. I don't really play video games any more, and I have very little interest in American politics. I'm just the nerd that tries to keep the trains running on time so that people can learn and game.

I usually fix stuff that's broken by bleeding-edge updates on my Arch Linux server for "fun" on the weekends now instead of gaming. I sometimes play PS4 with the kids. I'm getting old.

If you get in touch with the professor that uses the game in his class, he'd probably be happy to discuss the types of issues that you guys are curious about.

[lezapper]

Hi, I don't know where to post this and I don't have permission to create a new thread, so I'll ask here since it's the closest I can find to a tech thread. I've been trying to get a pitboss game working and it's been pure hell. The wizard locks up, I've had a million connectivity issues (probably because of the network I'm on), getting the pitboss server to run on linux has been a nightmare and many other frustrations.

Here's what I'd like to do: run a pitboss server from my old comp which currently has a xubuntu install, barring that I can always install ubuntu on it instead. I'd like to run 3 different pitboss games (possibly one or two more) on it.
If linux turns out to be too tricky, I'd like to do it on my windows machine instead. In that regard I've seen the ALTROOT option, though I don't fully understand its use. Also, the pitboss wizard locks up, a known issue I see, but I don't quite get how to work around it.

Could anyone give me a guide on the easiest way to get a pitboss server running on x/ubuntu? I've found a few older guides, but I've been unable to make them work. I suspect my lack of technical know-how is partly to blame, but I really want to make this work and I really want to learn more about how to make it work. I found the PBStats, but as there are some gaps in my basic know-how I'm not sure I understand everything. Any help would be awesomely appreciated.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I haven't tried to configure pitboss on Linux myself, but someone has successfully done it before. In a nutshell, since you're using a native Windows application with the Civ4BeyondSword_PitBoss.exe program you'll need to use WINE to emulate a Windows environment to get the program running. But that's the last layer you should try to tackle in this project, I would suggest trying to get the ALTROOT configuration working in a real Windows environment first, to confirm you've done that correctly. I've set that up before (once, a few years ago), I found the posts over at CFC to be sufficiently detailed. As for the wizard locking up that's easy enough, modify your hosts file as indicated in the first post of this thread. You'll need to add one additional line to your hosts file, to add a localhost redirect for motd.gamespy.com in your hosts file, that will prevent the pitboss wizard from freezing while it waits for the DNS lookup to time out.

I don't know if anyone has written a complete guide to do a setup specifically like this before, but all the individual steps are relatively well documented.

[Zulan]

Hi, I don't know where to post this and I don't have permission to create a new thread, so I'll ask here since it's the closest I can find to a tech thread. I've been trying to get a pitboss game working and it's been pure hell. The wizard locks up, I've had a million connectivity issues (probably because of the network I'm on), getting the pitboss server to run on linux has been a nightmare and many other frustrations.

Here's what I'd like to do: run a pitboss server from my old comp which currently has a xubuntu install, barring that I can always install ubuntu on it instead. I'd like to run 3 different pitboss games (possibly one or two more) on it.
If linux turns out to be too tricky, I'd like to do it on my windows machine instead. In that regard I've seen the ALTROOT option, though I don't fully understand its use. Also, the pitboss wizard locks up, a known issue I see, but I don't quite get how to work around it.

Could anyone give me a guide on the easiest way to get a pitboss server running on x/ubuntu? I've found a few older guides, but I've been unable to make them work. I suspect my lack of technical know-how is partly to blame, but I really want to make this work and I really want to learn more about how to make it work. I found the PBStats, but as there are some gaps in my basic know-how I'm not sure I understand everything. Any help would be awesomely appreciated.

The wizard freeze issue is related to the shutdown of the gamespy servers (IIRC the motd server) IIRC it should work if you use the hosts file for use with my natneg/alternative lobby (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Zulan/...ster/hosts, append to /etc/hosts). Ramkhamhaeng, who is 'the authority' on hosting pitboss on linux has created a pitboss mod that also makes PB-hosting on linux much easier and convenient, especially removing the need for the PB-GUI, but also removing the Wizard freeze). You can find the project here https://github.com/YggdrasiI/PBStats/tre...B%20Mod_v3. The difficulty of hosting depends whether your Linux machine is headless (no graphical output) or not. It is more difficult on headless machines.

[Zulan]

FYI, my root server which runs the natneg crashed on Thrusday around 17:00 CET, I restarted the Natneg on Friday 20:30 CET. Sorry about the downtime, this was the first time in 5 years that I my root crashs at my hoster (hetzner).

[EvilLurksInternet]

Hi, natneg wouldnt work for players with certain router configs (it seems this type of router comes with complete prohibition by provider of portforwarding).
Such players can connect to other players with good router settings, but cant connect to each other. 3 such players were witnessed and tested with simultaneously, with 2 normal players. It was done relatively comprehensively during ~1 hour.
Further in the post I will call people with those weird routers - weirdos (for short).
We figured that direct cause of failure of connection between 2 weirdos comes as follows.
1. Both weirdos send 3 INIT packets to NN (run by Zulan), and get correct responses for each INIT from NN.
2. Then NN sends to each weirdo a CONNECT packet (containing their counterparts respective ip, global communication port).
3. Weirdos try to connect on the received(in CONNECT packet) ip/global port. But they fail, then they send REPORT command to NN. The command has info saying that their connect didnt have success.

The 1st difference of the weird router from normal router is in following - weirdo router doesnt allow its clients to go out from same global port to 2 different ip's.
When weirdo goes from same localport used to go to NN, to go to different ip, he will get different globalport from router for second connection.
And 2nd setting of difference of the weirdo router - any new connectors trying to join weirdo client on a globalport already used for some connection (the one established by natneg in the case), wont get through either. When on normal router u can reach the client by going at the globalport used by that client in connection to natneg.

In case of weirdo connecting with normal player, weirdo is able to reach normal's 'communication port' from port different from the one that it was expecting by NN.

Well, anyway novice, i could explain in more details, and invite those weirdos for testing (cant 100% promise they will come tho), if u have a desire/time to figure it out.
Also we got the logs of NN and the memory of how testing went. And some understanding how NN works.

P. S. Weirdos are 95% certain that when they were able to connect on official gs year ago, they were using same internet configuration/provider.

[EvilLurksInternet]

Also funny thing. When one of the weirdos tried to configure(do some portforwarding) his router, which he bought from his internet provider, he said he discovered mysterious beings that called themselves 'tunnel brokers'. Tunnel brokers offered him to increase functionality of the router in exchange for internet tariffs increase. Weirdos were very angry with tunnel brokers but wouldnt want to pay. And then they went to tunngle, in which they said they are able to connect but this tunngle is pain in the ass by some reason.

[novice]

There are probably some aspects of the NAT negotation that aren't implemented, yes, which support routers with restrictive port forwarding policies.

The easiest way to resolve this is probably to reconfigure said routers, though. Are you saying it isn't possible at all to configure these routers to allow port forwarding?